


You Will Know His Name

by PrinceDarcy



Category: Carrie - All Media Types, Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, I'm not sure whether to call this shippy or not, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Original Character Death(s), Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Finale, Psychic Abilities, Revenge, Telekinesis, The Straitjacket, Violent Thoughts, Will Graham's trippy dream sequences, Will makes a fool of Hannibal Lecter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-09
Updated: 2014-01-26
Packaged: 2018-01-08 01:55:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1127021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrinceDarcy/pseuds/PrinceDarcy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will Graham gets his revenge in the days leading up to his trial. Jack Crawford is left to piece together what happened from the few people who made it out alive.</p><p>Inspired by Bryan Fuller's version of Carrie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Days Until Trial: Eight

“Talk to me, doctor.”

Jack’s voice is stern, no-nonsense. He’s had enough nonsense for a lifetime, particularly from the mouth of Frederick Chilton. The fluorescent light over their heads is flickering, and Chilton shifts in his metal seat, looking altogether like a little boy called down to the principal’s office. Jack’s demeanor only adds to the impression, playing the role of the principal in that tableau with perfect conviction.

“I’m not sure what there is to say.”

Jack’s leaning on the table, his expression one of someone who knows exactly what he wants to hear. A young FBI agent is operating a camera pointed at Chilton’s face; despite the doctor’s nervous appearance he still seems to be making sure the camera gets his best angle.

“I want you to tell me everything you know about the incident involving Will Graham.”

“There were – _several_ incidents involving Mr. Graham. Leading up to the one two weeks ago.” Whether he’s being contradictory to stall for time or is honestly as uncertain as he seems, Jack is tired of what Chilton’s doing the moment he starts. He sighs, frowning.

“Then start at the _beginning_ , doctor.”

“Of course, of course.” The doctor doesn’t look pleased. “It was about a week before the – _main event_ that Mr. Graham started behaving… oddly.”

“More oddly than you expected him to, given the circumstances?”

“ _Far_ more.”

* * *

 

“Hey, Graham, still waiting for daddy to come make it all go away?”

“Aw, baby, don’t cry, daddy’s coming for ya!”

“Poor baby, it’s gonna be okay. Just hold still now!”

It’s only a few of the rowdier patients that are causing a commotion, but it might as well be the whole block with how much noise they’re making, jeering at Will Graham through the bars of their cells. It takes three orderlies to calm everyone down, both the instigators and the inmates disturbed by the fuss, before they can even get to the man of the hour’s own cell.

Graham’s slumped against his bed, curly hair hanging down over his face and knees drawn up to his chest, whole body seeming to shake. His eyes are open, but he seems markedly absent. If it weren’t for the shaking he might look dead.

“On your feet, Mr. Graham.” He stands in one rigid movement, like a comical impression of a zombie, his face not changing. He has these episodes, all the orderlies had been warned about it. Spells of disassociation, according to Graham’s psychiatrist. He hasn’t been on his meds long enough for them to stop yet.

One orderly enters the cell to cuff him and lead him out. Graham doesn’t resist, doesn’t even flinch, just lets himself be pushed around like a ragdoll. He looks like he’s been crying – eyes are red and puffy, cheeks are damp. It doesn’t matter. People cry in places like this and they do a lot worse than that.

Graham seems to come to midway being lead down the hallway, looks up, looks around, but doesn’t say a word. He picks at his fingernails and the skin around them behind his back, despite his nails already being past the quick. That doesn’t matter much either to the orderlies. Crying in his cell, biting his nails, Will Graham is one _average_ patient in a psychiatric hospital. Criminally insane or not.

Chilton, however, is far more interested, giving Graham’s fingers a good long inspection once the man’s seated on the other side of his desk.

“Tsk, what a mess you’ve made of your hands, Mr. Graham.” He muses, examining the raw skin on Graham’s fingers. Graham gives some small sound of displeasure a little like a snarl, the corner of his mouth twitching. “Nervous about your trial? Only eight days away.”

“I’m not nervous.” Graham  mutters, curling his hands into fists. He, as usual, is far more focused on Chilton’s tie than his face.

“You should be. There’s already talk about transferring you back to Virginia, you know.” Chilton’s unfazed, expertly so for someone who had his guts reorganized by a violent patient. “They’ll probably give you the death sentence when you’re found guilty. They are _so_ enthusiastic about it over there.”

“I’m innocent.” Graham’s voice is a little louder, a little angrier. The orderlies all tense up on instinct, backs straighter, hands a smidgen closer to their guns. Chilton remains unmovable.

“Yes, yes, of course you are. Barney here tells me you were catatonic when they came to get you, Mr. Graham, why don’t we talk about that?”

“I had a bad dream.” If Chilton can see that Graham is practically _seething_ , he doesn’t seem affected by it, but the orderly called Barney takes a moment to think to himself that the guy looks ready to bite. “It took me a little longer than usual to wake up.”

“And what were you dreaming about, Mr. Graham?” Chilton’s complete nonchalance is almost more worrisome than Graham’s rapidly worsening rage.

“I don’t think that’s any of your business, _doctor._ ”

“Now, Mr. Graham, being cooperative is just about the only way you can help your case at this point.” Chilton smiles. Graham digs what’s left of his nails into his palms.

“You don’t give a fuck about my _case_.”

“Of course I do. I’d hate to see a brain like yours go to waste by having you executed, Mr. Graham. I’ve already recommended to your attorney that you file an insanity–“

In an instant Graham’s hands are unclenched, one of them wrapped loosely around Chilton’s wrist as he leans forward in his seat.

“I am not _insane_!” He’s practically spitting fire, but the tone of his voice is the last thing on anyone’s mind as Chilton’s desk flies a foot to the left and a snap echoes  through the room. Chilton cries out in agony, grabbing his wrist, and Graham falls back into his chair, eyes wide, anger gone, fear taking its place.

Therapy is cut short as Chilton calls for medical attention and for Graham to be restrained. The orderlies comply. Graham is lead back to his cell in a straitjacket.

* * *

 

Jack casts an incredulous glance at Chilton’s right wrist, still in a brace. “You’re saying _Will Graham_ broke your wrist.”

It’s Chilton’s turn to look tired of Jack. His expression says ‘well, obviously’ in a way words never could. Jack shoots a look right back, first to Chilton’s face and then to his wrist. The desk flying a foot across the room isn’t even worthy of thought at the moment. Perhaps Jack hasn’t even registered it as strange, or maybe he just thinks Chilton’s more likely to lie about a broken wrist.

“Barney Matthews testified that Graham had barely touched you when you started screaming.”

“My wrist is most assuredly broken, agent Crawford, you can look at my X-rays if you feel the need to confirm. How much Mr. Graham did or didn’t touch me is, in my opinion, less important than the fact that my wrist snapped when he did.”

Jack frowns, unsatisfied but unable to argue – his least favorite state to be in.

“There’s still something fishy going on there. We’ll get back to that.”


	2. Days until Trial: Eight/Seven

They do away with the straitjacket when Will’s in his cell, which he’s sickly grateful for. Never had his arms felt stiffer in his life than when they were strapped around his back, and the feeling of being able to freely pick and tear at the skin on his fingers is undeniable relief.

He’s tuned out to everything around him for a good few minutes as his mind drifts to what happened in Chilton’s office, to the way Chilton’s wrist had snapped with barely any contact, let alone pressure, or how the desk had moved without being touched.

Slowly, though, the distraction of it ebbs away and he becomes slowly aware of the man in the cell next to him yelling through the walls. Avery, James. Serial rapist. Paranoid schizophrenic. Very well medicated, still an insufferable bully and honestly, in Will’s mind, deserves to be in a regular, grimy old prison with regular, grimy old criminals.

 His head doesn’t even clear enough for him to make out individual words but there are words and there are too many of them and Avery’s voice just drives him mad no matter what he’s saying. _Poor baby, it’s gonna be okay. Daddy’s coming._

“ _Shut up!_ ” Will shouts, he thinks in vain – then there’s a loud crash of something heavy hitting the bars of the cell next to him and a low groan of pain. Avery’s quite efficiently shut up, and when the orderlies rush down Will’s able to ascertain that his bed, and subsequently Avery, had somehow tipped and been flung against the bars.

It goes against every ounce of scientific knowledge Will has, but it makes his mouth twitch into a smile regardless.

* * *

 

Jack is much more keen to be in the presence of Hannibal Lecter than Frederick Chilton, even in the context of questioning him. It’s a situation they were in before – memories still flow too freely of Will frantically waking up in his hospital bed with Jack and Lecter on either side of him, launching into an undeniable panic at the very sight of Lecter’s face.

He wouldn’t calm down until Lecter was out of the room, but the moment he was, Will had turned to Jack as the very picture of lucidity and clarity, and accused Dr. Hannibal Lecter of five murders.

They’d had to question Lecter anyway, considering Will had taken him hostage, forced him to drive the pair of them to Minnesota and nearly put a bullet in his head – and Jack had been willing to play along for one afternoon and consider Lecter a _possible_ suspect, just because no one wanted to believe Will had really done it all.

Despite the hostage situation, despite the assault charge that was being added on top of the murder, kidnapping and escaping federal custody by the armed guard who Will had thrown out of the back of the transport van during his escape (the armed guard who was now wheelchair-bound and would need extensive physical therapy to regain use of his legs) and every other bit of behavior that was making the case against Will absolutely damning, Jack was willing to take one shot at questioning Lecter to try and find anything suspicious.

Lecter was spotless – for that.

This time is different, and they both know it.

“You visited Will Graham twice before the fire, doctor?”

“Yes.” Lecter is precisely as somber as anyone would expect him to be, given the circumstances. Maybe even slightly more so, when Jack gives it thought – it’s been two weeks. All the funerals are over and done with. Lecter attended all of them, of course, out of solidarity. Everyone who knew Will did.

Lecter’s still wearing black, which is unusual for him.

Jack chalks it up to the fact that they still haven’t found Will’s body. Maybe the guy’s still mourning.

“When was the first time?”

“The day after he assaulted Dr. Chilton. A week before his trial.”

“Can you tell me what happened that day, doctor?”

* * *

 

He’s sitting on the end of his bed with his back to the bars in the morning, hugging himself like the straitjacket, eyes wide open but mind not in them. He hadn’t slept a minute the last night, the whole night spent figuring out what this _power_ is.

Will started with the pillow on his bed, focusing on it, thinking about Dr. Chilton calling him insane and James Avery’s taunts and Hannibal _fucking_ Lecter, and it moved. First with headache-causing effort – then with more and more ease. Lifting it up and dropping it like it was nothing.

By morning he’s raising the bed in the air, letting it hover a few inches off the ground, and slowly returning it. Arms wrapped around himself, not a hand raised, and he’s moving something too heavy for him to move even if he was using physical force.

He’s almost giddy with the realization of what it he can do when footsteps approaching break his concentration and the bed crashes down hard.

“Will.” Lecter’s voice sounds from behind him, ever so casual like it always is. Will doesn’t turn around. “What was that noise?”

“It must have been one of the other patients.” Will mutters, glancing over his shoulder and finally letting himself out of his awkward self-embrace. “Why are you here?”

“I heard about what happened to Dr. Chilton – as well as the state they found you in prior. I was concerned that your condition is not improving, and with your trial approaching…” Lecter makes such a good show of being a concerned friend, but if Will closes his eyes he can still see a skeletal creature, black as tar with long antlers protruding from its skull. The feigned concern is tiring, so tiring – and he could just put an end to it. Choke Lecter with his tie. Or maybe stop his heart, make it look completely natural.

He settles for tipping Lecter’s chair over instead.

Lecter mumbles something about the chair being imbalanced, and Will takes a moment’s pleasure in the indignity of watching him fall on his ass, smiling once he’s turned back towards the wall.

“Attacking the people who are trying to help you is not going to do you any good when you are in the defendant’s seat, Will.” He says smoothly, much like someone who didn’t fall out of his chair moments earlier, and Will could laugh. “I understand you intend to plead not guilty, despite the fact that–”

“–and insanity plea is my best option? Save me the lecture, doctor. I’m pleading not guilty because _I didn’t kill those people_.”

“The evidence is sorely against you, Will.” Lecter says, and he almost sounds sad. _Boohoo, Will’s heart breaks for him._

“The evidence _you_ planted?” Will replies, and he just knows Lecter’s going to cut in, so he doesn’t give him the chance. “They’ll transfer me to Virginia and put me on death row if I’m found guilty. That sounds a lot more appealing than spending the rest of my life here with you and Chilton poking me through the bars like I’m an endangered animal.”

“You would rather be dead.” Lecter repeats. Behind closed eyes Will sees the beast readying a guillotine. No, but he wouldn’t want that – death isn’t his goal. Like Chilton said, he’d hate to see a good mind go to waste.

“I’d rather you don’t get whatever it is you want. Goodbye, Dr. Lecter.”

Will looks over his shoulder, mulling over the opportunity to kill Lecter – or at least break something like he did with Chilton – one more time. Lecter must be able to see that little bit of a thirst for blood in his patient-victim’s eyes, because he turns to leave, his last glance at Will something… fond. Approving.

Will regrets hours later as he slowly bends and unbends the bars of his cell that he didn’t have the _finesse_ to tie Lecter’s shoelaces together.

* * *

 

“You felt threatened when you left him that morning?” Jack asks, leaning against the table.

“Will’s expression of his desire to face execution rather than a life sentence in the hospital left me struck that he was far more of a danger to himself than to me, however,” Lecter speaks softly, absently tapping his fingers against the desk. “it would be wrong to deny that I never considered that Will might try to attack me as he did Frederick. From when I took him to Minnesota…”

“He believed you were the Copycat.”

“…Yes. And this delusion he had, that I had framed him – it made him angry. I cannot blame him for that.” Lecter laces his fingers together, sighing. “I wish I could have done more for him. Perhaps then he wouldn’t have…”

Jack puts a hand on Lecter’s shoulder. For a moment, the scene playing out feels reminiscent of comforting a grieving widow. The juxtaposition is an almost comical one, bringing forth an image of Lecter in a black veil, laying flowers on a grave. The amusement is gone the moment after it arrives.

“You can’t blame yourself for what Will Graham did, doctor.”


	3. Days Until Trial: Six

Will’s dreams are often jarring and disjointed, strange mixtures of the memories, actions, _designs_ of the various people he’d hunted down before his life became… this. He wears their faces like death masks in his dreams, performs a corrupt pantomime of their lives for the benefit of his own subconscious.

Sometimes he is Abigail Hobbs as her father holds the knife to her throat, begging him to let her go until Will’s eyes snap open and tears stain his face.

Sometimes he is Garrett Jacob Hobbs holding the knife, or strangling another dark haired girl until the life leaves her blue eyes, a sick kind of love in his heart as he watches them die.

Sometimes he is Hannibal Lecter, cutting into Cassie Boyle’s chest and tearing out her lungs before she’s even stopped breathing with them, mounting her body on a rack of antlers. A performance. A special matinee for Will – seeing the negative so he can see the positive. If he was as sick as Lecter thought he would have been grateful.

Tonight he is Will Graham, he is no one but himself and he is rage and fire on marionette strings. His ears ring with the words of those hated patients who taunt him, Avery in the next cell over at their head, and with Dr. Chilton treating him like a wounded animal and calling him insane, calling him a killer, and with Hannibal Lecter pulling those strings. _You’re being paranoid, Will. You have to move past these delusions and see the truth._

Fire consumes and he sees the black beast, but this time he is the raven-feathered stag and he lunges at it, pinning it with all his weight in his antlers. His _bête noire_ suffocates under him before he is immolated by the flames, and Will wakes up shivering in a cold sweat.

He gropes for his bed sheets to pull up around himself and does not find them. He does not know James Avery is hanging by them in the next cell over until the orderlies arrive.

* * *

 

“What was your impression of Will Graham from the time you were working with him, Mr. Matthews?”

Barney Matthews is similar in size and build to Jack himself, but he looks infinitely smaller in his chair with the head of the BSU looking down on him. While he could take Jack in a fight, he lacks certain elements of his temperament – which isn’t to say he is in any way a sub-par orderly. He has everything he needs to be excellent at his job. He is stern when needed, he follows the rules and inspires others to do the same, he isn’t afraid to use his strength when he needs to, but he has respect for the patients he works with. Compassion for them and knowledge of the fact that many of them needed nothing more than to be helped.

Jack Crawford, on the other hand, is not a particularly compassionate man.

“Mr. Graham had gone through the wringer, Agent – no offense. He was sick and he thought everyone was out to get him. He didn’t take well to therapy, but he was never cruel.”

“You don’t consider killing James Avery _cruel_ , Mr. Matthews?” Jack crosses his arms, glancing to the young woman operating the camera, as if to say ‘can you believe this?’

“Mr. Graham didn’t kill Mr. Avery, Agent Crawford.” Barney says with impressive conviction.

“James Avery was found hanging in his cell from a noose made from Will Graham’s bed sheets.” Jack shoots back. Barney gives a half-hearted little shrug.

“I don’t know how it happened, Agent, but it wasn’t Mr. Graham. It had to be someone with a key – neither cell’s lock was tampered with. He didn’t break out of his cell and he didn’t break _into_ anyone else’s.”

Jack sighs and sits down. It looks like it’s going to be a long evening.

“Freddie Lounds visited Mr. Graham the same day you found Avery’s body, didn’t she?”

The name of the late “reporter” is enough to put a little bit of Jack Crawford’s temperament in Barney Matthews, and he nods quite bitterly.

“I told Dr. Chilton about fifteen times not to let her talk to him.”

“Why was that, Mr. Matthews?”

“I don’t want to cast dispersions on the dead or anything, but – look at what I do for a living, I don’t say this lightly – that woman was _crazy_.”

* * *

 

“Mr. Graham. What a pleasure it is to see you again.” Lounds smiles saccharinely as she slips into her seat, adjusting the hem of her bright green pencil skirt. Will leans against the bars. He does not smile. He thinks about snapping her neck, knows he could, doesn’t do it.

“I don’t know how James Avery died.” He says plainly, because he knows that’s what she’s going to ask him about.

“Never said you did.” Lounds replies, still dripping with sugar, but she isn’t fooling anyone. She’s sweet poison and Will doesn’t intend to let himself succumb, not to her or to anyone like her. She isn’t the first journalist poking around outside his cell and trying to reach in, but she is the only one he loathes so completely. _It’s not very smart to piss off a guy who thinks about killing people for a living. It’s not very smart to piss off a guy with five murder charges and a can-do attitude._

“Then why are you here?” He says, teeth clenched, hands wrapped tightly around the bars. The cool metal starts to warm up under his palms until it’s hot, almost unbearably so, but it doesn’t burn him. A while ago Will might have found it strange, but he doesn’t find anything strange anymore. Just new and even exciting.

“The same reason as always, Mr. Graham. I’m looking for the truth and I want to hear your version of it.” Any more blatantly artificial sweetness in her tone and Lounds could be a walking sugar substitute commercial. Will’s able to rationalize not killing her by telling himself he’d rather use his own two hands, but his patience is already wearing thin and she’s been sitting there for about two minutes.

“I didn’t kill anyone.” He says plainly. Lounds’ smile doesn’t leave her face. “Not Cassie Boyle, Marissa Schuur, Donald Sutcliffe, Georgia Madchen, or Abigail Hobbs. Is that the truth you want, Ms. Lounds, or were you hoping I’d tearfully confess something for you to put on your website?”

“That depends if you have anything to confess, Mr. Graham, tearfully or not.”

“I don’t.”

Lounds crosses her legs, curls bouncing as she tilts her head. “You can be honest with me, Mr. Graham. I’ll find out all your dirty little secrets one way or another. Why don’t we start with how you managed to kill James Avery?”

“I didn’t kill him.” _He deserved to die._ “I never left my cell.” _He didn’t have to._

“You know, there’s a lot of talk about you around here, Mr. Graham, especially in the last few days. People say you can do things they can’t explain.” Will scoffs as if she isn’t completely right, and Lounds somehow takes that as confirmation. “Things like killing a man without leaving your little _cage_.”

“This is taking tabloid reporting to a new low, Ms. Lounds.” He hisses, sitting on the foot of his bed. The way he’s sitting, she can’t see that the pillow is starting to float behind his back. “ _Telekinesis?_ ”

“Just covering all my bases. Of course, if _I_ had some kind of power like that – I think I’d try to escape, wouldn’t you?” Lounds stood up, smoothing out her skirt, and gave one last tooth-rotting smile. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Graham.”


	4. Days Until Trial: Five

Will’s cell is the only one in the block not completely gutted. The bars are gone – embedded into the concrete wall opposite, which Jack doesn’t even bother questioning – and the bed is still lying on its side, but it’s as if the fire hadn’t even touched it. All signs of damage stops a foot away from where the bars had been, almost too cleanly.

They’d come in and cleaned up the broken glass from all the lights that had fallen and gotten rid of what was left of the bodies, but other than that, prison staff had, by the FBI’s request, left everything generally untouched. Two weeks isn’t likely to make much of a difference in how long it’ll take to return the block to functioning capacity, and any evidence that’s there needs to stay there.

Will’s cell, as it happens, has evidence.

It’s got exactly the sort of _wall of crazy_ going on that people expect from prisoners in a high-security psychiatric hospital. Jack doesn’t know where he got half the stuff that’s up there, but there’s photos of all his crime scenes, newspaper clippings, both from the time of the copycat’s murders and after Will’s arrest, and printed off Tattlecrime.com articles, all with Freddie Lounds’ name and picture scribbled over.

One article, a newspaper piece written just after Will was caught, is by far the weirdest – not in terms of what’s written in it, but what Will did to it. The word “WRONG” is written what looks like fifty times, covering half the text, and there’s scrawled figures in the margins. Dark, long arms, antlers protruding from their heads. One of them is smaller, with long hair, shorter antlers. It’s labeled “bait.” Jack ignores the figures as best he can and reads the little bit that’s legible, a paragraph talking about Will’s encephalitis.

He had circled the word “inflamed” every time it appeared. The residual smell of smoke suddenly seems thicker in the air, and Jack coughs against his forearm.

It’s one of the other officers who finds the article on the ground, between the bed and the wall. Another Tattlecrime piece, this one about the death of James Avery. It’s nine kinds of crazy, just like Matthews had said it was, what with the talk about Avery’s murder being carried out psychically – but the article isn’t what’s interesting in and of itself. What’s interesting is a footnote, in handwriting that is distinctly not Will Graham’s, penned in after Lounds’ closing statement that Will was at risk of escaping.

“Not a bad idea, don’t you think?”

The words look to be written with a fountain pen, and though the hand isn’t Will’s, it’s not entirely unfamiliar, either. Jack can say with certainty that he’s seen it _somewhere_ , though he can’t quite place where.

The article gets added to the collection of evidence, and Jack closes his eyes as he stands in the center of the room, wishing for a moment that he could do what Will Graham did and reconstruct what happened. Where was Will, when there was something so baffling to figure out, an event that made no sense by any stretch of the imagination?

Dead, presumably. Consumed by the flames with everyone else in the block. They’re bound to find a body – or some part of a body – eventually, of course, since the fire couldn’t have destroyed everything. They had Will’s funeral already, body or no body, but some confirmation he wasn’t out on the loose somewhere would make everyone sleep a little easier at night.

Especially when it looks like Lounds and the mysterious note-writer planted the idea of escaping in his head no more than a couple days before the fire.

 

Jack makes a mental note to find out who supplied the _wall of crazy_ as they leave the cell to check if there’s anything useful among the charred mess of the hallway, sparing one glance back and imagining the man he’d one considered a friend in the middle of it.

* * *

 

Will looks uncharacteristically serene, sitting cross-legged on the floor of his cell with his hands on the bars, eyes focused straight ahead like the blank wall opposite him is the most interesting thing he’s ever seen. In reality, he doesn’t see the wall at all. He sees a veil in front of his eyes, hiding away everything past his hands, and in the folds of the veil he sees the face of Freddie Lounds.

He scribbles her out in his mind’s eye the same way he did on all those articles Dr. Lecter slipped him through the bars when he visited, tears her features to shreds with big black strokes, and he lets the rage with which he destroys her face flow through him like venom to match hers in his veins. His hands shake, his whole body shakes, and his eyes roll back in his head before they slip shut.

The bars heat up beneath Will’s hands like they did when Lounds sat opposite him, and that’s what he was trying to do by thinking of her. Let that same power out and turn the metal bars red hot. And he’s succeeding, metal burning hot but never actually marring his skin, the sound of the frame of his bed rattling loud in his ears and in his head.

And then there’s another sound, a voice, an orderly’s voice. Alarmed.

“Mr. Graham?” The orderly questions.

Will does not stir, not right away.

“ _Mr. Graham?_ Are you alright?” The orderly tries again, more urgently, and the shaking ceases as Will’s eyes snap open.

“I’m fine.” Will says in an empty voice, drawing his hands away from the scalding metal. The orderly’s brought his dinner, breakfast, lunch, he doesn’t know what meal it is because time is foreign to him now, but what matters to him more than the plastic tray is the envelope that the orderly is trying to conceal beneath it as he puts it down in Will’s cell. He pretends he doesn’t see it on the ground when Will’s forced down as much of the tasteless sustenance as he can inflict upon himself and takes the tray away, and Will knows _exactly_ who’s padding this man’s wallet to pass something along to him without it going under Chilton’s nose.

The orderly brushes his hand against one of the bars as he leaves and yelps in pain and surprise. Will pretends not to notice that, but there’s a faint smile on his face as he picks up the envelope and turns it over in his hands.

His name, just his name, is written in an elegant hand on one side of the envelope. He licks his lips, brings the envelope up close to his face, and breathes in the scent of Hannibal Lecter’s cologne, so distinct on the paper that he might almost think it was perfumed deliberately for his benefit. Perhaps it was. A means of identifying the sender that would fade before anyone else could use it to the same ends.

He moves from the floor to the bed, lying back as he tears into the envelope with all the ferocity he’d like to tear at Lecter’s throat, and extracts its contents.

Anger bubbles up inside him as it proves to be another Tattlecrime article, this one all about poor old Avery – but then, for the first time since his imprisonment that he’s thought about Lecter, the anger subsides, just a bit. Curiosity and interest flush it out of him as handwritten words below Lounds’ post script catch his eye, in the same neat handwriting as his name on the robust parchment of the envelope.

“Not a bad idea, don’t you think?”

He slips the article under his pillow, and the orderly does away with the envelope when he brings Will his next meal. He can see the redness of a mild burn on the back of his new _contact's_ hand, and, that night, he dreams of his  _bête noire_ amid a field consumed by flames.


End file.
